Free EMR Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use,
ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Join thousands of healthcare pros who subscribe to EMR and HIPAA for FREE!!

Email Address:

We never sell or give out your contact information.
We respect our readers' privacy.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

As is probably going to forever be the case, much of my experience at HIMSS gets to benefit from the beauty of social media. Today was no different as their was the #HITsm chat where we played #HITsm account bingo. Somehow I ended up on stage competing against my fellow EMR and EHR writer, Jennifer Dennard, for one of the prizes. Happily she won. I cheered for her over me too. All in all it was a fun time hearing about the various people in the HITsm social media community.

The evening of day 2 was also highlighted by the New Media Meetup event. This is our 5th year organizing the event and I believe we can call it a great success. A big thanks to Stericycle Communication Solutions for sponsoring the event, and for everyone that attended. For those I didn’t really get a chance to see and talk with, let’s make up for it tomorrow. Although, as I always tell people, the best part of the event is that there are hundreds of amazing people you can meet.

Here were two comments attendees made to me about the event, “That conversation right there was more valuable to me than any of the sessions at HIMSS.” And then this one from someone who’s been to at least four of the meetups, “This is always my favorite event.” What a blessing for me to take part in such a tremendous HIMSS social media community.

Enough with my social media experience at HIMSS. Today I had a number of really interesting conversations. Some of them I’ll be saving for future posts. However, one thing stood out to me today in my discussions with a new EHR vendor called Viztek and the multiple EHR vendor, Allscripts.

When I decided to meet with Viztek, I was intrigued by the fact that they were just launching a new EHR software. I wanted to see who wave brave (or crazy depending on perspective) enough to launch a new EHR software at this point in the game. Are 300+ EHR vendors not enough? Plus, I thought the market was suppose to be contracting and not growing.

I was actually impressed by what I found at Viztek. No doubt, in the short time I had during HIMSS, I didn’t have time to dig in really deep to evaluate the breadth of the EHR they’ve created, it’s usability and feature set. Instead, with our short time I wanted to understand the why and EMR market conditions that prompted them to build and launch another EHR software.

What’s particularly interesting about Viztek is that they have a full PACS and RIS software system that they’ve already been selling for a long time. They saw offering an EHR software as a natural extension to this offering. Considering there’s still some growth available in the ambulatory market, and in specialties where they have deep PACS needs (like ortho) I could see an opportunity. One of the most compelling reasons for a practice to go with the fully integrated PACs and EHR software is that it leaves only one vendor to look to when there are issues. Don’t underestimate the value of this. I’m not sure of the pricing of their EHR, but I won’t be surprised if like many other vendors the EHR is just a way to get access to and solidify their main revenue stream (in this case PACS).

On the other end of the spectrum was my meeting with Allscripts. In my discussion, I almost got the feeling (although, they certainly didn’t state this specifically), that EHR has become almost a commodity. The idea being that everyone is going to have an EHR and that the EHR market is going to be a heterogeneous environment. I assure you that the later is true and will be for the forseeable future. So, it makes a lot of sense why much of the focus of our conversation was around Allscripts efforts with DBMotion to provide a platform that brings together all the data from the heterogeneous EHR systems.

I was really intrigued by each of these companies and how far apart they are in their approach to EHR. At the one side of the spectrum I see a new EHR that’s still trying to provide the right EHR software for the physician. On the other hand, you have a vendor that’s always been known as an EHR vendor (and quite frankly still is with so many EHR software under one roof) is now shifting much of their focus to population health and ACO technology.

I’ve previously written that the Golden Age of EHR adoption is over. We’re entering into a much bumpier and brutal period of EHR transition. We’ll see if doctors get some relief from ONC on Thursday. Word at HIMSS is that on Thursday they’ll be announcing something important in regards to meaningful use (likely during one of the ONC/CMS keynotes). At the CHIME event they said something to the effect of, “we’ve heard you and we’re going to help.” I’ll be on a plane home, but no doubt the details will be tweeted live.

There you have it. A few of my thoughts from day 2 of HIMSS. Tomorrow’s my last day at the event. I have too many things scheduled, but we’ll do what we can to discover interesting content and share more with you tomorrow.

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

Want to buy HIE technology? It’ll cost you. But more importantly, you’ll still be dealing with a bewildering array of choices, if a new report from KLAS has it right.

According to KLAS, which asked 95 providers about their HIE buying plans, there were a few clear leaders in the field. Providers surveyed by KLAS reviewed 38 HIE vendor offerings. Of those, five HIE vendors were considered in more than 10 percent of the providers’ buying plans, researchers found.

If there was a clear leader, it was Medicity, which was considered in 23 percent of HIE buying decisions, according to a report from Healthcare IT News. Next was Axolotl, with 22 percent; RelayHealth, with 16 percent; ICA, with 11 percent, and Epic, also with 11 percent. (Note: Epic was only being considered seriously when providers want to tie together multiple Epic installations.)

Looked at another way — by vendors mentioned most frequently by providers — the leaders were Axolotl, Cerner, dbMotion (part owned by the University of Pittburgh Medical Center), Epic, GE, ICA, InterSystems, Medicity, Orion and RelayHealth.

If you want to really fit the HIE to your situation, consider the following criteria, the HIN story suggests:

Public HIEs – A public exchange may belong to official state agencies or may be semi-independent with direct and typically temporary government backing. Public HIEs demand solutions with strong potential scalability and need standards-based technology.

Cooperative HIEs – In this model, otherwise-competitive hospitals work together to form independent HIE organizations, generally with an open invitation to other hospitals, clinics and physician practices. These HIEs often struggle to establish long-term funding and look for vendor solutions that offer flexible and affordable cost alternatives while best adapting diverse EMR technologies.

Private HIEs – In some respects, private HIEs are designed to enhance relationships as well as exchange data. Often, a single hospital or IDN creates an HIE hoping to draw in community physicians while protecting or increasing revenues. Funding is less complicated and these HIEs are more likely to be satisfied with solutions that best work with their existing technology.

The truth is, though, that whatever model best fits your HIE purchase, narrowing things down to your short-list isn’t as easy as just picking from KLAS’s top contenders. Even these leaders have a moderate to tenuous grip on the market, and may or may not have the solution that fits your model. (Note: I’m familiar with Axolotl and Orion, both of which have what may be some of the longest-deployed tech out there, but I can’t vouch that they’re exactly better than anyone else.)

If it were me, I’d look at lesser-known, strongly-backed folks focused directly on the problem. Then, I’d do a co-development program with them so both win. Got other ideas to share readers?

Free EMR Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use,
ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Join thousands of healthcare pros who subscribe to EMR and HIPAA for FREE!

Email Address:

We never sell or give out your contact information. We respect our readers' privacy.